Author Wally Lamb makes you believe again

Wally Lamb's "The Hour I First Believed: A Novel" is about one man's stumbling, confused journey to find order in a world gone chaotic, to find faith and belief in something among all the evil and hypocrisy.

The book pivots on chaos theory, which is the idea that something small occurs and the shockwaves of it travel farther than imaginable.

Caelum Quirk, an English teacher at Columbine High School took a personal day on the infamous Columbine shootings occurred.  Unfortunately, his wife Maureen, the school's nurse, was present, so he raced home to see if she was okay.

Quirk is relieved until he realizes that she was still a casualty despite her unbroken skin. Due to the events she suffered a severe case of post-traumatic stress disorder which caused her to spiral out of control into debilitating flashbacks and drug addiction, eventually leading her to prison.

Attempting to pick up the pieces of his broken home, Quirk opens his home to tenants, one of which helps him begin his quest to discover the truth about who his life.

Along the way, he finds a valuable faith he didn't even know he needed. Other characters in the novel, such as Velvet, the student of Quirk, who was sexually abused and it seemed to set the tone for the rest of her life. 

Velvet, the author illustrates, was abused and knows no other way to relate to men. This struggle is shown by her interaction with Quirk throughout the novel.

She's flailing in a confusing, hypocritical and frightening world. This is a disturbingly accurate representation of a teenage girl's life.

Written in Lamb's characteristically informal tone, the story is told from the point of view of cynical, laid-back and occasionally funny Quirk.

Part of Lamb's particular skill, the writing sounds more like an old friend recanting an experience at a party than the philosophical, theological and sometimes political discourse of haven't even done it once."

This author pays attention to detail. As a result, his characters step right off the page and into our world. It's as welcoming and casual as can be, but not too far below the surface.

Big ideas come into play in this novel, including the controversial question of whose failure the vices of the downtrodden actually are--that of society or that of the individual? And the bigger question of what to do about it, whose fault it is.

With an ingenious combination of myth, real life and history, Lamb wove a story of the mythical quest in real life so believable and so heart-wrenching you will walk away from it a different person.